by Joy Fielding
Joan took a sip of her tea, felt it burn the tip of her tongue, and cried out in pain.
“Are you okay?” Linda asked, leaning so far forward in her chair that she seemed in danger of falling off.
“Yes. Fine,” Joan said, calculating how fast she could gulp down her tea without scalding her throat, and get the hell out of here without appearing even more unhinged than she already did. “So, how was the party?”
“It was okay. The hostess isn’t the best cook, but she has some interesting friends.” She gasped.
This time it was Joan leaning forward in her chair. “What’s wrong?”
Linda lowered her mug to the white slate coffee table in front of them. “There was this man. Harold…Harry…yes, Harry. Harry Gatlin. That’s it. Tall, nice-looking, a retired professor, his wife died maybe three years ago…a lovely man. What do you think?”
“What do I think about what?”
“Would you like to meet him?”
“What?” What was happening?
“Well, it just occurred to me…You’re both around the same age, you lost your husband, he lost his wife. You’re both very…interesting.” Another furtive glance at Joan’s hair.
“I don’t think so,” Joan said.
“Are you seeing someone?”
“No, but—”
“Then, come on. He’s a doll. Trust me. He’s well traveled, cultured, funny.” She laughed. “He was telling me about his attempts at online dating. Real horror stories. Can you imagine doing something like that?” she asked, as Joan squirmed in her seat.
“Still, I give him credit. It’s not easy putting yourself out there. Tricky enough when you’re young, but at our age…So, what do you say? Can I make a few subtle inquiries?”
Joan doubted there was anything that the woman sitting across from her could say or do that might be considered remotely subtle. Still, anything would be an improvement over the likes of Simply Pete and his leopard-print thong. She rose decisively to her feet. “Sure, why not?”
“That’s the spirit.”
Joan carried her mug back into the kitchen, depositing it in the stainless-steel sink. “Thanks for the tea.” She turned around to find Linda gathering up the newspapers strewn across the island countertop.
“Isn’t it awful about that poor girl?” Linda was saying, pointing to the picture of Tiffany Sleight on the front page. “They’re saying she was raped and tortured.” She shuddered, accompanying Joan to the front door. “So, I’ll call you after I speak to Harry.”
“I’m curious,” Joan said, stopping in the doorway. “What are you going to tell him about me?”
“That there’s this lovely woman in my building I think he should meet.”
“What about my hair?”
Linda paused. “Why don’t we let that be a surprise?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
He hates surprises, always has. They have a way of turning into disasters.
Like the time his mother decided to throw a surprise party for his father’s fortieth birthday, and she invited all his friends, and made all his favorite foods, and even bought a stupid birthday cake, one of those gooey, sugary concoctions like the kind you had when you were a kid, with lots of icing and rainbow-colored flowers running amok across the top.
Well, her husband surprised her, all right—by not coming home until well after all the guests had gone home, the smell of alcohol on his breath, the scent of another woman on his fingers. And when she’d dared to get angry, he’d responded by scooping up a fistful of that gooey white icing and forcing it down her throat, then grinding what was left of it into her face and hair.
The next morning, the remnants of last night’s surprise lay smeared across the kitchen floor, like a coat of sticky varnish, and his mother sat nursing a swollen eye. He could have told her this would happen, had she been smart enough to ask for his opinion. Of course, brains weren’t exactly her strong suit.
Truth to tell, she got what she deserved.
So much for surprises.
Which is why he’s always taken such pains with his preparations, and why he feels so blindsided, so betrayed, by the events of the last several days. He’d calculated everything so carefully, down to the most insignificant detail, only to see his meticulous planning backfire when circumstances beyond his control threatened to ruin everything.
Take Tiffany Sleight.
Yes, please, as the old joke goes, somebody take her.
He’d spent weeks wooing that bitch online, going slow, teasing her with compliments, giving her his best bad-boy-in-need-of-a-good-woman persona, advancing only to withdraw, answering some of her texts within minutes, waiting days to respond to others, whetting her appetite while keeping her off balance, setting up two separate assignations and then not showing up to either, pleading last-minute cold feet and a fear of rejection, then begging for a chance to redeem himself, “treating her mean to keep her keen.”
And it had worked, as he knew it would, as it always did.
He’d been confident that after having been stood up twice, sweet Tiffany would be loath to confide in her friends that she was setting herself up for a possible strike number three. And even if she did tell someone, so what? The name he’d given her was as fake as his excuses. The minute he showed his handsome face, she’d be putty in his hands.
And everything had unfolded exactly as scripted. Any trepidations she might have had dissolved the minute they locked eyes. All it took was thirty minutes of pretending to be interested in every stupid word she uttered, and she’d followed him willingly into the night, into his apartment, into his trap.
“Why are you doing this?” sweet Tiffany had asked, her hands shackled behind her, the tears streaming down her cheeks disappearing into the rope around her neck. A silly question.
What could he say, after all? Because he could? Because he enjoyed it? Because he hated the lemon scent of her cheap perfume? Because she was too dumb to live? How about…all of the above?
He’d finished her off relatively quickly—that lemon scent was making him nauseous—then disposed of her in a landfill outside of town, reasoning that by the time anyone discovered her body—if anyone discovered her body—she would be nothing but a pile of foul-smelling bones. He hadn’t figured on someone’s dog escaping his yard and rummaging through the mountain of garbage in a desperate search for food, unearthing the poor girl’s rotting remains while there was still enough of her left to identify.
That was the first surprise.
The resulting front-page news had put the city on edge. There was talk of a possible serial killer. And while part of him was pleased to have his work acknowledged, however obliquely, he feared that the women of Boston might not be as quick as they’d been to risk their lives for a handsome stranger.
He needn’t have worried. There was no shortage of stupid women.
Take Nadia.
Yes, please. Somebody take her.
Nadia had been both pretty and not too bright. She’d told him stories of growing up poor in Romania, and of the overly handsy boss in the nearby suburb of Newton whose employ she’d been forced to flee. She even gave a pretty good blow job, not always the easiest thing to accomplish with a knife pressed to your throat. Best of all, she’d made such a considerate corpse, leaving only a minimum of mess for him to clean up.
By the time he’d returned from his little surveillance mission at Faneuil Hall, Nadia’s muscles had started losing their rigidity, making her arms and legs easier to manipulate. He’d stuffed her into two overlapping heavy-duty garbage bags, thrown her clothes, a bunch of rags, and the remains of their dinner on top of her, and waited till the early morning hours to carry her out to the trunk of his car.
Which was when he ran into surprise number two.
Mrs. Imogene Lebowski.
The stu
pid old bat owned the three-story rooming house that he was temporarily calling home. She lived on the ground floor and rented out the top two. He’d found her through Airbnb, and quickly snapped up the third-floor furnished apartment, which had proved ideal for his purposes. Imogene, in turn, was thrilled to have such a reliable, good-looking young man for a tenant, especially since he would be around for a few months. Unlike most guests, who were usually gone within weeks, if not days.
He loved the transients and tourists who filed through the second-floor unit. They moved in; they moved out. In between, they kept to themselves and minded their own business. They had no interest in making friends or sniffing around where they didn’t belong. If he passed them on the stairs, he kept his head down and kept moving. They did the same.
It was perfect.
As was Mrs. Imogene Lebowski, who was eighty-eight years old and generally sound asleep before ten.
Except, of course, for the night he went to dispose of Nadia’s body.
He shuddered at the memory, watching himself struggling down the two flights of stairs with the garbage bags containing her body. He made it to the bottom and was reaching for the door reserved for renters when it suddenly opened and there stood Imogene.
She was wearing a long, blue nightgown and a look of total confusion. Her feet were bare.
“Mrs. Lebowski?” he asked, as shocked to see the octogenarian as she was to see him. “What are you doing here? Are you all right?”
Truthfully, he didn’t give a rat’s ass how she was. He cared only that she was there, her watery gray eyes fixed on the garbage bag on the floor behind him. Had he made more noise than he’d realized when stuffing Nadia’s body inside it? Had he woken up the old bat, arousing her suspicions?
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Who am I?” he repeated, wondering what game she was playing.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“I’m your tenant, Mrs. Lebowski. Don’t you know me?”
“Of course I know you,” she said, although her eyes said otherwise. “What are you doing?”
“Just throwing out a bunch of old crap. What are you doing?”
Imogene Lebowski sighed. The sigh said she had no idea.
Either she was sleepwalking or she was having some sort of seizure. Or maybe it was the onset of dementia. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting away from her as fast as he could. “Mrs. Lebowski,” he began. “I don’t think you should be out now. It’s two o’clock in the morning. You should go back to bed.”
If she found it odd that he was throwing things out at two in the morning, she gave no such indication. She just stood there. Staring at the large green garbage bags containing Nadia’s body.
“Mrs. Lebowski,” he repeated. Then, laying a gentle hand on her arm, as he’d done with Joan Hamilton in Nordstrom’s that afternoon, “Imogene.”
A coquettish smile appeared at the corners of her lips. When she spoke, her voice fluttered girlishly between octaves. “You’re a very handsome young man,” she said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
He lowered his chin modestly. You’ve got to be kidding me, he thought. “Thank you. Now, I really think you should be getting back to bed.”
“Could you help me?”
For an instant, he thought she might be propositioning him. Then he saw the look of fear in her eyes and realized she wasn’t sure where her bed was. Shit, he thought. Escorting her back to her room meant leaving Nadia’s body at the foot of the stairs, unattended, for at least five minutes. He didn’t know if the tenant in the second-floor unit was home or not. What if he was out and came back to discover the bag lying there? What if he peeked inside? What if he called the police? Shit. Shit.
Still, what choice did he have? If he refused, he and Imogene could be standing here till morning. “Okay,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her into the warm night air.
Luckily, she’d left the front door unlocked, and he guided her inside the foyer, leaving the door open as he escorted her to the master bedroom at the back of the house. The place had that “old people” smell, he was thinking as he maneuvered her gently toward her bed. “My daughter wants to put me in a home,” she confided as he was tucking her inside the wrinkled, stale-smelling sheets.
“Get some sleep,” he said, wondering if he should do everyone a favor and simply finish her off now, save her daughter the trouble and expense of putting her in a home. It would be so easy, he thought, to press a pillow over her nose and mouth until she stopped breathing.
Although it would probably be more fun to strangle her, to watch those watery gray eyes turn milky white.
“You’re a very sweet man,” she whispered, interrupting his thoughts. “You won’t let my daughter put me in a home, will you?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He pulled her blanket up around her shoulders. “Now get some sleep.” Then die, he added silently.
“Good night,” she whispered as he was tiptoeing from the room.
“Good night,” he said firmly, as a car door slammed outside. Shit, he thought, racing to the front door. What now?
But if there’d been a car, it had vanished into the night.
Just his imagination getting the better of him. Another unpleasant surprise.
He wasn’t used to anything getting the better of him.
Everything else went pretty much according to plan. He carried the garbage bags with Nadia’s remains to his car, which he’d parked at the side of the road just prior to bringing her body downstairs, then tossed it in the trunk and drove to the suburb of Newton, where he threw it into a large garbage bin behind a McDonald’s not far from the home of Nadia’s former employer. If anyone were to check its contents, which was highly unlikely, “Mr. Handsy” would be the first one the police would suspect. And wouldn’t that be fun!
But that all happened a few days ago, and there’s been no mention in the media of another body turning up, so it seems he’s safe for now.
Which brings him to Paige Hamilton, the biggest surprise of all. Not only did she cancel their date at the last minute, she’s made no attempt since to contact him. At the very least, he expected her to reach out with another apology and a plea to try again. But no, she obviously considers herself too good for that, and is waiting for him to make the next move.
And he will. In his own sweet time.
He’s decided to lie low for a week or two. Paige Hamilton has thrown him off his game, and Mr. Right Now needs time to rest and recharge his batteries.
But don’t worry, Wildflower, he thinks with a smile. I’ll be back, meaner and wilier than ever.
And there will be no more surprises.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Well, isn’t this a pleasant surprise,” Kendall Bates greeted Heather upon her return to work. “Nice of you to finally show up.”
Heather quickly tucked the bags from Nordstrom’s beneath her desk and began shuffling papers around in an effort to appear busy, in case one of the other dozen or more account people on the floor happened to be watching.
“Marsha’s been asking for you.”
“Shit.” Marsha was her supervisor, and it was just Heather’s unfortunate luck that she’d come looking for her on the one afternoon—all right, maybe more than one—she took an extra hour for lunch. Heather checked her watch. More like two extra hours, she realized. “What’d you tell her?”
“That you’d been complaining of an upset stomach, so you might have gone upstairs to lie down.”
“That’s the best you could come up with?”
“What’d you want me to tell her—that you took off half the afternoon to go shopping for a party dress?”
Heather rolled her eyes, glancing around the large, open space that housed the third-floor offices of McCann Advertising, whil
e reaching into the largest of the bags and ignoring the not-so-subtle rebuke. “You want to see what I got?”
Kendall slid her chair from her cubicle across the aisle to Heather’s desk as Heather removed the skimpy, red-beaded cocktail dress from the layers of tissue paper surrounding it. “Wow,” Kendall exclaimed. “That’s some dress. Where’s the front of it?”
“You think it’s too low-cut?”
Kendall shrugged. “You know what they say—if you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
“I have it, and I intend to.” Heather laughed as she stuffed the dress back inside the bag. “Wait till you see the shoes.” She withdrew a box from the second bag.
“You got Louboutins?”
“Feast your eyes.” She opened the box and removed one rhinestone-covered pump, balancing its five-inch heel in the palm of her hand.
“Wow. How much did those set you back?”
“Not a dime. My mother paid for them.”
“Nice mom. Think she’d consider adopting me?”
Heather was returning the shoe box to the bag when she felt a large shadow looming over her. She didn’t have to look up to know the shadow belonged to her supervisor, Marsha Buchanan. She should have smoked a joint before returning to work, she was thinking, something to take the edge off a possible confrontation. She made a mental note to call Brandon later. McCann Advertising’s former courier was dismissed a few months back over his more lucrative sideline of supplying weed to employees. Heather had been one of his best customers.
“You’re not throwing up, are you?” Marsha asked, her distinctive gravelly voice dripping sarcasm. The voice hinted at too many late nights spent drinking and smoking, but the hints were misleading, as Marsha neither drank nor smoked. As far as Heather could tell, the woman, only a few years her senior, had no vices at all. If not for her simple gold wedding band and the myriad pictures of three chubby little children that littered her desk, Heather would have suspected Marsha was still a virgin. There was just something sexless about people who were overweight, she’d always thought. In fact, it was hard for her to imagine women as plain as Marsha Buchanan, with her unfashionable brown bob and flat, no-nonsense shoes, having sex at all. Heather couldn’t help wondering what Marsha’s husband saw in her. He was a good-looking man. She’d flirted with him at last year’s office party, which hadn’t exactly endeared her to her superior.